What is cheapest way to fly around SE Asia in a circuit - hub with roundtrip tickets or sequence of oneway tickets?
Is it better (cheaper) to hub out of Singapore and buy round trip tickets from hub or buy one way tickets around the region? (I fly to SG Thursday. I am planning to visit SG, Bali, Jakarta, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, HK, Shanghai over a 2 month period).
Related: If hub/roundtrip tickets are the way to go then is it better to hub out of Singapore or Kuala Lumpur? And better to fly AirAsia or other airline discount prices?
Best Answer
The answer is going to depend on your exact itinerary, but my sneaky suspicion is that hubbing out of Kuala Lumpur and flying Air Asia everywhere would be the cheapest way to do it. Not only is Air Asia cheap and ubiquitous, but the passenger taxes & charges at KUL are noticeably lower than in SIN.
That said, Kuala Lumpur's LCC terminal is a bit of a hole and looping through can be slow, so if there's a sensibly priced alternative I'd willingly pay some money to avoid it. (The long-delayed new terminal is scheduled to open May 2014, but I'm not holding my breath.)
Also, there are definitely some legs of the journey you'll want to fly direct, or even consider crossing overland. Domestic Indonesian flights (eg. Jakarta-Bali) are ridiculously cheap, and Bangkok-Laos-Cambodia-Vietnam can be done overland cheaply and reasonably comfortably. Train is also a serious alternative for all travel in China, including HK-Shanghai.
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Is it cheaper to buy airline tickets one-way or round-trip?
When traveling within the U.S., airlines typically price one-way flights at exactly half the cost of a round-trip. There certainly are exceptions, especially for those that fly out of smaller, regional airports.What is the cheapest way to get to Asia?
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